When What You Need is a Friend
by AKA Jay
Summary: (OotP Spoilers - H/D) Hogwarts has more secrets per square inch than anywhere else in the world. This is one of the consequences of that, as is a sell-out on black masks and decoder rings.


Title: When What You Need Is A Friend  
  
Author: Ash Jay  
  
Site: xanadu-dreams.com  
  
livejournal: livejournal.com\users\ashjay\  
  
Comments: Appreciated like you wouldn't believe.   
  
Warning: Spoilers for OotP, of a sort.   
  
*(When what you need is a friend.)*  
  
***  
  
It's a free period for the chameleon room now.   
  
It's a rare even in a place like Hogwarts, where villains are grown free-range and secrets are on the official curriculam. Secret societies sprout like mushrooms in this kind of environment, and nowadays people in black masks are practically tripping over each other in the corridors and the entire school is abuzz with the whispering and counter-whispering of passwords and recognition signs.   
  
Actually, between the black masks (reduced field of vision) and the sad lack of creativity found in the average Hogwarts' student (ten societies have the word 'quidditch' as their password. Five more have 'quid-witch', and think themselves very clever for it), this results in a lot of confusion.   
  
Think of it as the world's largest game of Telephone, but played masked and using mainly sentences like, "The darkness is coming,", "The darkness is not coming fast enough", "When will we three meet again?", and "What do you mean 'again', I've never seen either of you before in my life."   
  
The most common sentences, of course, are: "Is this the (insert secret cabal) meeting?" and:  
  
Its inevitable answer: "No, the (secret cabal) is meeting tomorrow, down the hall."  
  
(Closely following in popularity is:  
  
The rejoinder: "Silly me, this is the (dark name) meeting, isn't it?"  
  
The terrible iron voice that says: "Yes, and now you know too much. You must be silenced."   
  
The confident reply: "Kill *me*? *Me*? Don't you know who I am?"  
  
The irritated: "No, of course not. We can't see a thing through these bloody masks."  
  
The rapid: "Yoink!", followed immediately by:   
  
The sound of running feet and:  
  
The furious: "Damn it all to hell!" and the inevitable: "Who *was* that masked man?")  
  
The point is, the Room of Requirement has a waiting list about six months long, and the fact that this list is kept invisibly and is completely unknown to the majority of its clients doesn't mean that it isn't rigorously followed. The schedule must be kept, after all. Preparations must be made.  
  
For example, right now half an hour has passed since Dumbledore's Army left, all high spirits and bruises in strange places, and there's an hour still to go before the Junior Owl Fanciers arrive to perform their strange, convoluted, and, above all, *strong-smelling* rites.   
  
The room is in flux.   
  
Cushiony mats suitable for knocking one's peers onto have sprouted feathers, and might be quite dangerous if not nocturnal. As it is, they snore lightly in their slumber, their breath ruffling the sensitive hairs of what was ten minutes ago a powerful Sneakascope and what is now the last word in detecting menacing owls before they can do whatever it is owls do to the unwary. (There has never been a *reported* owl attack. Contrary to what most people think, this is not a reassuring fact.)  
  
The next meeting of the 'Dark Gathering', unofficial booster club for evil and sporadic holder of suspiciously successful fundraising drives... is not scheduled until tomorrow night.   
  
Thus, the candles are not black and dribbly, the carpet is relentlessly not faded and stained with thankfully unrecognizable substances, and the only truly evil thing in the room is an open day scheduler upon which someone has scribbled the name of the society on the wrong date.   
  
The day scheduler looks capable of gnawing off a finger, the wrong date is written in a style of penmanship that suggests that losing a finger could only improve things, and Draco is probably going to be quite angry about this later on.  
  
"Come on, Harry," Draco says in a reasonable tone of voice. "It's only fair."  
  
"No," Harry says firmly.  
  
"I helped you with your potions assignment in class yesterday,"  
  
"I failed!"   
  
  
  
"That's not my fault," Draco says. "I helped you make the potion perfectly, didn't I?"  
  
"Yes," Harry admits. "And then you added powdered... what was it?"  
  
"Ixion horn," Draco says.  
  
"Ixion horn!" Harry says, bringing his palm down on the table, which squacks mournfully. It has only been alive for three minutes now, and already it feels hard done by.   
  
"So I put ixion horn in the potion," Draco shrugs, a boneless movement of the shoulders that manages to encompass a range of meanings all the way from 'so what?' to 'seriously. so *what*?"  
  
"My potion blew up!" Harry says, slapping the table again. The table, discovering that it has feet, starts to inch away.  
  
"And?" Draco says, leaning forward. His eyes are sparkling rather more than they should be.  
  
"It turned Hermione purple!" Harry says.  
  
"Yes, I know," Draco says, grinning. "It didn't suit her, did it?"  
  
"Not as such, no," Harry narrowed his eyes. "But I think the icing, the absolute *icing* on the cake was when you turned to Ron and said - "  
  
"Loudly."  
  
"*Very* loudly, that-"  
  
"'Don't sabotage Potter just because he's shagging your Mudblood girlfriend, weasel. Have some -'"  
  
"'Dignity'," Harry finishes bitterly, biting off the word.  
  
"And then the weasel jumped me," Draco says.   
  
"And Hermione tried to help," Harry says.  
  
"And you *all* lost marks," Draco says happily.  
  
"Yes," Harry says. "So you can see how I really don't feel all that indebted to you."  
  
"Ah," Draco says, "But the crucial point... the nub of the matter or some such... is that I helped you make the potion correctly. Yes?"  
  
"Yes," Harry says, "right before you *blew it up*."  
  
"Oh well," Draco says calmly. "The rest of it? All your fault."  
  
"What?" Harry says, bringing both hands down on where the table was just a second ago, he was sure of it, and... "What?" Harry says again after picking himself up from the floor.  
  
"You turned your back on me," Draco says. "What did you expect?"  
  
Harry's eyes narrow. "Is this your idea of remorse? Because it looks more like smug."  
  
"Well spotted!" Draco says. "Try another, why don't you?" He leans back on a chair that, pinioned by his weight, is having no luck at all becoming airborne. It's presently considering the merits of becoming aquatic, but has the sinking feeling that Draco wouldn't notice.  
  
Harry looks at Draco's face. "Smug," he says.  
  
Draco lifts an eyebrow.  
  
"Smug," Harry says.  
  
Draco lifts both eyebrows, and one corner of his mouth.  
  
"Tough one," Harry says, "but I'm going to have to go with smug."  
  
Draco's face relaxes back into an expression that while still, yes, smug, is definitely on the low end of the smugness scale.  
  
"You're *good* at this," he says admiringly. "Have you taken lessons?"  
  
"No, but I have a book. It's required reading for people like me."  
  
"Fate-cursed pawns of destiny whose journey through despair and cyclical redemption is only leavened by the occasional game of Quidditch?"  
  
"Ah, so you've read the flyleaf?" Harry says. "'If found, please return to fate-cursed pawn of destiny'?"  
  
"Of course," Draco says, "I always read the flyleaves of books. It's important to know who not to return them to. Tell me, would you classify it as a reference book, or as a dictionary?"  
  
The chair squeaks under him as he moves. (Nothing to do with normal chair noises, of course. It's attempting to locate an escape route via sonar. The echoes are not encouraging.)  
  
"Actually," Harry says after a moment of thought, "I've always thought of it as more of a bird watching book, but for bastards."   
  
Draco looks curious. "What breed am I, then?"  
  
"You? I'd say that you're a textbook example of the British white crowned prat."  
  
Draco stands up from the floor where his desperate chair has just deposited him, and says, "A prat?"   
  
"Yes," Harry continues, warming to the subject, "somewhere there's a pratologist with an empty jar in his display case, and a lonely little label that reads 'Draconis Bastardus (albino)'."  
  
Harry's standing up too, partly because otherwise Draco would be taller than him, and partly because his chair, in a cunning feint, has managed to hit him behind the knees, pull in his ankles, and get the hell out of there before gravity figured out what was going on.  
  
"Whereas you," Draco says, not bothering to look down at the trail of feathers and upholstery nails. "are still proudly on display, 'Hero-us Fortuna (scarred)', for all the world to coo over. How lucky we are to have you, Harry. How bloody fucking lucky. I could just die."  
  
Harry glares at Draco. The chairs attempt to join the table in its refuge behind what was a weapons' case and what will be a egg hatchery and is presently unpleasantly in between. Draco glares at Harry.  
  
They smile at the same time. Not the chairs.  
  
"Idiot," Draco says almost affectionately.  
  
"Bastard," Harry says rather more so.  
  
"Ah, but an *honest* bastard."  
  
"True," Harry concedes. "There is that. At least *you* never lie to me. All right then, 'Draconis Bastardus (honest)'."  
  
"And (handsome)," Draco says.  
  
"No," Harry says.  
  
"No?"  
  
"No."   
  
"Liar."  
  
"...yes."  
  
Silence.  
  
Well, almost.  
  
"Seriously," Draco says after some time, "give me a hand with this. What rhymes with 'king'?"  
  
Later, it takes the entire executive council of the Junior Owl Fanciers League to talk the table down out of the rafters.   
  
The chairs are declared missing: presumed owls.  
  
(What do you need?)  
  
______  
  
End  
  
Tell me what you think?  
  
(There's a drawing for this story... sort of. xanadu-dreams.com/plu3.jpg )  
  
(It's quite strange.)  
  
(Consider yourself warned.) 


End file.
